Albert Camus, a French author and philosopher who received a Novel Prize for Literature in 1957, once wrote that “beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.”

For Camus, the idea that each and every question leads to another – in an infinite regress, to the point where one does not know what to think – is the beginning of wisdom.

Camus obviously knew that thoughtlessness was not an option, yet he saw that people are caught between the impossibility of clear and final knowledge and the desperate need to seek the truth; and seek the truth we do.

The great enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant also explored the importance of seeking truth, stating that “true enlightenment is simply daring to think.”

Kant, in Critique of Pure Reason, urges us to ask three questions: What can I know? What am I supposed to do? What may I hope for?

Such reflection is the cognitive basis of human meaning; it involves constant questioning of what is behind ordinary life.

Only through such self-reflection can students understand the many constraints education and society imposes on their intellectual interests; it is through this reflection that students can regain control over their intellectual lives.